Home > How to Dance an Undead Waltz (The Beginner's Guide to Necromancy #4)(6)

How to Dance an Undead Waltz (The Beginner's Guide to Necromancy #4)(6)
Author: Hailey Edwards

“Good morning,” he rasped, his grating voice a jarring counterpoint to his sculpted features. “Do you want to eat or train first?”

Morning. Huh. For me it was. For him… The pack was still adjusting to a wholly nocturnal schedule.

“This is a trick question.” I darted a quick glance toward the kitchen and found Linus propped in the doorway, supervising. Midas touched me as little as possible, a true skill when teaching combat techniques. He was as likely to hurt me as I was to tear the wings off a butterfly, but Linus kept to the sidelines in case I required his nursing skills all the same. “What’s on the menu?”

“Smoothies.” Linus twitched his lips at my scowl. “And crepes filled with apples stewed in brown sugar and cinnamon.”

Down at my side, I pumped my fist. “Whipped cream?”

He winged an eyebrow in answer. “First, the smoothie.”

The man was sure getting his money’s worth out of that blender.

Wrinkling my nose, I contradicted him. “First, I train.”

Midas bounced on the balls of his feet. “In or out?”

Woolly gusted a sigh that fluttered her curtains at the notion of another living room sparring match.

“Out.” I shooed him toward the door but paused under the foyer chandelier. “We apologized for breaking the Wedgwood teapot.”

A pained moan rose from the floor registers, and the lights dimmed a fraction.

“I promised to buy a new one,” I reminded her, aware of how Woolly took pride in the collection.

“The seventy-third Grande Dame gifted Maud that piece when Maud was forty-five and the Grande Dame believed her son would marry her.” Linus examined the ceiling. On me, it would have been an eye-roll. On him, it was an unconscious attempt at accessing his mental vault. “Maud refused to give it back when she turned down the offer of marriage, and it sparked a twenty-five-year feud with the Arlington family.”

“How do you know these things?” I shook my head. “You missed your calling as a historian.”

“I thought I missed my calling as a chef.”

“That too.” His multitude of facets made it possible for so many masks to fit him. “Are you coming?”

A pleased flush warmed his cheeks at the invitation. “Of course.”

Midas watched our byplay with a blank expression. “I’ve got fifty-five minutes before my shift starts.”

“Your boss will let you off the hook,” I teased. “You’re covering for Hood tonight?”

“Lethe and I are each working a twelve-hour shift.” He grunted. “She gave him pain meds after our run last night to knock him out cold. That’s the only way to get him to rest while he finishes recovering.”

“The arrow.” I watched his face to see if he would tell me the truth. “What was wrong with it?”

“The archer knew you had gwyllgi enforcers.” Muscles fluttered along his jaw. “The arrowheads were bronze.”

“Bronze is bad?” I made a mental note. “You have an allergy similar to wargs with silver?”

“We do.” His lips compressed. “There aren’t many of us in the US. Few of our packs migrated here. It’s not common knowledge but…” He rolled his answer around in his mouth. “We have ties to the fae, and the fae will bargain their own children away for a song if the mood strikes them.”

A tingle I hesitated to label as anticipation jolted my imagination. “Do you think fae are involved?”

“No,” he decided. “Not directly. The pact between fae and necromancers holds strong.”

“Indirectly then,” Linus interjected. “The information was purchased.”

“That’s my guess.” A fine rage trembled through his body that made me regret my choice to spar before I ate. “Let us handle the fae.”

“Happily.” Kidnappy vampires and rival necromancers were bad enough. The pack could keep their more exotic enemies to themselves. “Ready to kick my butt?”

“This is a self-defense class,” he said, shaking his head, “not an MMA brawl.”

From the kitchen, Linus hummed with approval. He might have preferred that I end up with Mathew, a necromancer who taught self-defense classes at Strophalos twice a year, but it turned out Midas was an ideal replacement.

The gwyllgi volunteered at women’s shelters in Atlanta, teaching women and their children how to protect themselves from their abusers. His kid-glove approach appeased Linus, and while I missed the bite of exertion I got from sparring with Taz, even I had to admit it didn’t suck walking away from his sessions without a limp.

Plus, he lived in the woods at the rear of the property. Talk about convenience.

The NDA Linus forced the pack to sign before allowing them access to me and my secrets boosted the trust factor too.

Midas and I exited the house and started warm-ups in the backyard, hidden from curious eyes.

A whisper of sensation shot my gaze upward, where Cletus hovered in an undulating wave above me.

“Good night, Cletus.”

The wraith inclined his head then flowed through the air to position himself at Linus’s shoulder.

Linus watched our interaction with marked curiosity that I had to admit I shared to an extent. Cletus was evolving. What that meant for him—and us—remained to be seen.

Midas would have hit me mid-sternum if he hadn’t pulled his palm strike at the last second.

“This isn’t social hour,” he reminded me. “You’ve got to focus.”

Sinking into the fighting stance he favored, I cast aside our audience and fell into the easy rhythm of the katas he was teaching me.

After we limbered up, he shifted gears into the hands-on portion of the lesson. “I’m going to walk you through the triangle choke, the bow and arrow choke, and the Americana armlock.”

“Those all sound painful.”

“Ladies’ choice.”

“Armlock?” That made me flinch the least. “Let’s try that one.”

Gait stiff, he retrieved a set of mats from the porch and flattened them over the grass, giving us a cushioned area to practice. That done, he dusted his hands. “On your back.”

I ducked my head before he read my shock. During our first lesson, he warned me to do whatever I could to avoid the ground. I figured he would cover worst-case scenarios eventually, but as much as he avoided physical contact, I hadn’t expected him to pick this course so soon.

The plastic was squishy beneath me as I made myself comfortable, legs bent, hands linked at my navel.

Midas knelt on my right side and adjusted my left arm at an angle on the mat. He bent over me and clamped his palm over my wrist. “Note the slant of your arm. Your elbow is in line with your chest.” He nudged my arm a fraction higher. “This puts your elbow in line with your face.” He looked down at me. “Avoid both of these positions. They require too much work and leave you open to a countermove.”

“Got it.” I nodded. “Elbows bad.”

Ignoring me, he repositioned my elbow down toward my hips. “This is ideal.” He leaned over me, careful to keep a fraction of space between our bodies as he maintained his hold on my wrist with his left arm while sliding his right forearm under my biceps and locking that hand over his opposite wrist. “All I have to do is lift—”

“Yowch.” I grunted as he torqued my elbow skyward with just enough force to burn. “I feel that.”

“Apply weight to limit your opponent’s mobility.” He briefly rested his side across my hips. “This works.” He shifted, exerting even less pressure as his opposite ribs got up close and personal with my face. “This works too.”

Midas was off me, his weight resting on his ankles, before I formulated any questions. “My turn?”

Jaw tight, he nodded, exchanging places with me so that I knelt beside him while he lay supine.

“I clamp your wrist like so.” I gripped him then slid his elbow into alignment with his hips. “I hook my arm under yours then cup my own wrist to create the lock.” I settled my weight onto him, pinning his hips with my side. “From here, I twist up and voilà.” About to shift toward his face and execute the move from that position, I noticed the urgent rise and fall of his chest. “Did I apply too much pressure?”

“No,” he panted. “You did fine.”

The wild glint in his eyes prompted me to withdraw from him slowly. I had seen that same panic reflected at me in the mirror often enough to sympathize. “Better?”

“Much.” Gulping air, he shot into the upright position. “How about we save the other chokes for next time?”

“Works for me.” I backed away to give him plenty of room to stand and then helped him gather the mats and put them away for the night. “I’m a good listener if you ever need to talk.”

Midas studied me, that wounded thing in his gaze winding tighter. “Has that line ever worked on you?”

The muscles in my shoulders pulled taut. “Call me out on my hypocrisy, why don’t you?”

“I respect what you’ve been through.” He raked a hand through his damp hair. “You’re a survivor.”

“So are you.” The scars on his body were too methodical to have been made during brawls or dominance fights, assuming gwyllgi tussled the same as wargs. “Can you handle this? What we’re doing here?”

“I don’t talk about it,” he said, low and rough. “This is my therapy.”

“Can I ask a question?” I acknowledged the line I was toeing. “Just to give me perspective?”

All those slabs of lean muscle coiled tighter than a rattler preparing to strike. “Okay.”

“You teach women and children.” I fumbled to grasp the right question. “How was this different? What triggered you?”

“Necromancers are hard for me to trust.” He held out his arms, exposing his wrists and the long slices that scarred his inner forearms. “I’m hoping we can help each other.”

   
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